nasa

NASA has a special treat for us this Halloween: Narrowly escaping the destruction of the planet!

Well, sort of. Through the use of their new computer program called Scout, NASA has determined that a potentially-dangerous asteroid will be breezing past Earth by a mere 310,000 miles. Rejoice! We’re going to be ok!

Scout is part of a new detection system that alerts us when a giant piece of space rock is on its way, hurdling towards Earth at thousands of miles per hour. Think of it like Domino's Pizza Tracker, but for things that could potentially destroy our entire planet and not just your body.

The new program seems to be working great. According to NPR,astronomer Paul Chodas said, “The NASA surveys are finding something like at least five Asteroids a night.”

“Objects can come close to the Earth shortly after discovery,” he continued. “The main goal of Scout is to speed up the confirmation process... Our goal right now is to find 90 percent of the 140-meter asteroids and larger.”

Now, what would we do if an asteroid were to hit Earth? Well, scientists are still working on that. In the meantime, here’s a clip from the Ben Affleck’s commentary track for the Criterion Collection DVD of Armageddon, in which mercilessly makes fun of the movie and its director, Michael Bay. More reason to not put “landing a spaceship on an asteroid, drilling a hole in it, and blowing it up” on the list of “Possible Solutions for Asteroid Hitting Earth.”

It's pretty safe to say this new addition is kind of a troll by NASA on believers in astrology. That doesn't mean this is a FAKE prank. NASA doesn't believe in astrology, they just pointed out a correction.

The European Space Agency (ESA) just released their satellite Gaia's "First Sky Map" showing our entire Milky Way Galaxy in one single image, the first of it's kind, from long-awaited space science technology.

According to Digg, "when Gaia completes its mission, humanity will have the most accurate and complete catalog of celestial bodies in the Milky Way."

Early in the morning of Sept. 1, 2016, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, caught both Earth and the moon crossing in front of the sun. SDO keeps a constant eye on the sun, but during SDO’s semiannual eclipse seasons, Earth briefly blocks SDO’s line of sight each day – a consequence of SDO’s geosynchronous orbit. On Sept. 1, Earth completely eclipsed the sun from SDO’s perspective just as the moon began its journey across the face of the sun. The end of the Earth eclipse happened just in time for SDO to catch the final stages of the lunar transit. In the SDO data, you can tell Earth and the moon’s shadows apart by their edges: Earth’s is fuzzy, while the moon’s is sharp and distinct. This is because Earth’s atmosphere absorbs some of the sun’s light, creating an ill-defined edge. On the other hand, the moon has no atmosphere, producing a crisp horizon. This particular geometry of Earth, the moon and the sun had effects on viewing down on the ground as well: It resulted in a simultaneous eclipse visible from southern Africa. The eclipse was what's known as a ring of fire, or annular, eclipse, which is similar to a total solar eclipse, except it happens when the moon is at a point in its orbit farther from Earth than average. The increased distance causes the moon’s apparent size to be smaller, so it doesn't block the entire face of the sun. This leaves a bright, narrow ring of the solar surface visible, looking much like a ring of fire. http://go.nasa.gov/2clNBFs

NASA engineer and physicist Harold White is working on using the theory of relativity to travel at warp speed. The ship will be called IXS Enterprise, while he's still working on the math to prove it can be done, the concept art has already been completed by designer Mark Rademaker. In an interview with The Washington Post Rademaker explained the purpose behind the designs:

"We wanted to have a decent image of a theory conforming Warp ship to motivate young people to pursue a STEM career," Rademaker said in an e-mail interview. "It does have some Sci-Fi features that might never transfer to a possible final design, unless we really want to."

What are these glorious golden space swirls? According to NASA, who captured this video with the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), this happened when a dark solar filament erupted and caused a chain reaction.They call these cascading magnetic arches because what you see here is a lot of particles spinning around the sun's magnetic field lines.

Here's a video where you can see what a dark solar filament looks like. The darker area, almost in the shape of a circle is it. Filaments are plasma held above the sun's surface by magnetic forces.

What you're seeing is a bloom of phytoplankton in the North Atlantic Ocean. These microscopic organisms are very important to the environment and might even influence clouds and the climate.

This image was taken by the Suomi NPP satellite. Data from chlorophyll in the phytoplankton was combined with red, green and blue bands from the satellite's imaging system to make this picture. The mission of the satellite is to keep track of climate change and weather.

It's also pretty good at taking amazing pictures of Earth.

Some images taken from the satellite look a lot more like weather forecasts than gorgeous water colors but the phytoplankton blooms are actually a pretty normal occurrence.